3 1/2 Time-Outs Tuesday (Vol. 3)

Hosted by LarryD of AotA

Just like Conversion Diary's 7 Quick Takes, except it's half as long and twice as good.

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As my last semester of undergrad is well under way I’ve found myself swamped with what seems a multitude of tasks requiring my attention: taxes, absentee voting, resume-building, job-searching, applications for licensure, gathering demographic information for a research study and on and on. Well, such is being an adult I suppose; we had a good run, Childhood, but, you know, 1 Corinthians 13:11: “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me”, and all that I guess. I probably won’t be writing on here as regularly or as in-depth as I would like for a while but only because I’ll be doing all those responsible adult things I get to do now!

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Next, here’s some cool blogs I’ve discovered recently that are worth checking out

http://murrayvasser.blogspot.com/ has some insightful pieces on the abortion issue (as well as a variety of other stuff). In fact, I recently linked to him in regards to his post highlighting the parallels between abortion and infanticide.

http://thefogesproject.blogspot.com/ is written by a personal friend and Franciscan University alumni covering an array of topics from Catholicism, politics and nursing.

3

In response to the proposal of a personhood bill in Oklahoma banning abortions, Democrat Constance Johnson sarcastically proposed the following:

“Any action in which a man ejaculates or otherwise deposits semen anywhere but in a woman’s vagina shall be interpreted and construed as an action against an unborn child,” Johnson stated in a handwritten amendment to Oklahoma senate bill 1433.

The personhood bill declares that “unborn children have protectable interest in life, health and well-being.” However, Johnson categorically opposes the initiative stating that “My amendment seeks to draw attention to the absurdity, duplicity and lack of balance inherent in the policies of this state in regard to women.”

Indeed, Johnson’s amendment does in fact draw considerable attention to absurdity and duplicity but its not the personhood bill. That Johnson would mock initiatives defending human life beginning at conception and liken such measures to treating misplaced semen as an act against a child displays an astounding ignorance of basic biology. The only time in human develop that we can point to as the moment when a new person comes into existence is conception, when a whole new and unique sequence of DNA is created in a cell distinguishable from both the mother and the father. Everything from that moment on is muddled in ambiguity (and if your response to that is, what about delivery? See here. Or, if you say what about the moment of “viability”, remember that the definition of “viability” is constantly changing as medical technology becomes ever more advanced). Prior to conception, however, no act against an unborn child can be committed because one does not yet exist. Likening sperm to a zygote is the biological equivalent of comparing an adult stem cell to a man walking down the street and sarcastically remarking, “to make the destruction of this stem cell illegal is obviously absurd. Therefore, protecting that man’s rights demonstrates absurdity, duplicity and lack of balance.”

3 1/2 

Also, this: